


the potential of you and me

by revolutionnaire



Category: Formula 1 RPF
Genre: First Kiss, First Time, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-03-28
Updated: 2009-03-28
Packaged: 2017-12-14 21:01:51
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,587
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/841339
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/revolutionnaire/pseuds/revolutionnaire
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>it is a ritual until it is not.</p>
            </blockquote>





	the potential of you and me

**Author's Note:**

> (set from 2006 - 2008)

 

1.  
The first time he lets Fernando fuck him, it hurts like hell. He doesn't remember it ever being that painful, but of course, he'd always made sure he'd been plied with alcohol before, until his nerves were numb and mind clouded.  
  
With Fernando, it's raw and he's sober and oh god, it fucking  _hurts_. It feels like a hooked dagger burrowing deep into the base of his spine, slicing between the gaps of his vertebra, setting his nerve endings aflame, every thrust exploding in small blinding sparks of pain pain pain. He feels the burn of tears in his eyes so he squeezes them shut, grits his teeth and bites down, twists his face away and prays Fernando won't see the screwed up contortion on his face.   
  
Which Fernando doesn't, because he's got his eyes closed, and  _oh_ \-- he comes without much noise or fuss, just a sharp gasp of breath and a strangled moan that sounds more like a whimper than anything else.   
  
  
  
2.  
It doesn't happen straight away, oh god, no. It had taken Heikki weeks to approach Fernando (Fernando with his furrowed brow and beautiful eyes and careful laugh) and think of something to say that wasn't related to cars, racetracks, or pit strategies.  
  
It had taken a few more months after that to actually  _touch_  him. Just one touch – the single split-second consolatory press of a palm against the defeated slump of a shoulder - to exorcise countless months of frustrated lonely nights.  
  
  
  
3.  
This is how it starts.  
  
It's a balmy Italian night, it's been six races since Fernando's won anything and it is his idea to go out and drown their sorrows-- or rather,  _his_  sorrows. Heikki's just collateral, because it's what they do.  
  
Heikki hasn't had quite enough to drink, and they both know it. Still, he somehow manages to make Fernando see him off to his room before they part ways and it is another two painful weeks before they are together again. "I don't trust myself with the key right now," he jokes, holding onto Fernando's arm a little tighter than he really needs to. "You have to help me in. or I may sleep out here on the floor."  
  
A quick in-out slide of the cardkey into the slot and the lock gives way with a soft click. Fernando pushes the door open, stands off to the side and ushers Heikki in with an outstretched arm.  
  
"Come in?" Heikki offers, pathetically. "Make sure I don't slip in the bathroom and die."  
  
Fernando shrugs. If you say so, princess.  
  
Fernando guides him, with a tentative hand barely brushing the small of his back, until he's seated safely on the wingchair, and offers him a complementary bottle of mineral water from the room's mini bar.  
  
"Thanks," he says, reaching out for it. Their fingers touch briefly; just the slightest graze of skin against skin but it's enough to derail Heikki's train of thought and rid him what little coherency he'd been clinging on to.  
  
He spills half the bottle down his shirt trying to unscrew the cap.  
  
Wincing, he looks up sheepishly. "Oops."  
  
All of a sudden, Fernando seems a lot closer than he was just a moment ago, and Heikki thinks he's going cross-eyed because Fernando's so close, so dizzyingly close.   
  
Fernando's so close and his fingers are ghosting along the dampness of Heikki's shirt, skimming across the buttons and letting them linger on the edge of the collar, millimeters away from the bare skin of Heikki's neck.  
  
He undoes the first button, clumsily.  
  
(Heikki's not sure, but he thinks Fernando's hands are actually trembling.)  
  
"You should--" Fernando starts in a low voice, and then pauses to clear his throat. "You should take it off."  
  
All this while, Heikki doesn't say a word because his mouth is painfully dry, his tongue feels like gauze against the roof of his mouth.  
  
"You'll get sick if you don't." A half-assed attempt to justify his actions to-- to god only knew who.   
  
Fernando works his way silently down the rest of the buttons and peels the shirt off. The air-conditioning is cold against his damp skin and Heikki shivers involuntarily.  
  
But Fernando's hands are invitingly warm and his arms are almost around him, but not quite; they're standing so close their foreheads could touch. And then Fernando closes the distance between them, and he's holding Heikki, who's standing there with his arms stiffly by his sides like a complete clod. His heart is racing, his mouth is still dry, and he's still shivering, and Fernando is--  
  
Holy shit.  
  
Fernando is  _holding_  him, for fuck's sake, holding him like lovers do, and he's standing there like an idiot in Fernando's arms. Fernando-- holy shit, his Fernando. The Fernando he's only dreamed about.  
  
Idiot or not, Fernando's the one who makes the first move. By now, Heikki's got his eyes closed, but he can almost see Fernando, a dark mass of shadow looming in front of his face, moving even closer - closer and closer and closer - until he feels the soft, dry pressure of lips against his own, but only for a second before it pulls away.  
  
And that's how it starts. Halting. Awkward. But it's a start.  
  
  
  
4.  
It becomes a ritual of sorts.  
  
Fernando fucks up (It's not your fault, Heikki will always insist. It's the car, it must be the car because you are the best driver I know.), they drink, and they inadvertently end up in bed together.  
  
It is a ritual—it is their ritual, but after a while, it isn't.  
  
Fernando doesn't fuck up, they don't drink, but they still end up together and find themselves –shy, nervous, and hesitant – in each other's arms before the sun comes up.  
  
  
  
5.  
Heikki gets himself into an accident during one of their practice sessions.   
  
It doesn't even happen on the track, for god's sake, but Heikki's just a klutz like that. He walks into a stack of tyres and crashes face-first onto the tar, skinning his knee and spraying gravel everywhere.   
  
He doesn't tell Fernando until two weeks later. By then the cuts have been sewn shut, dried up, and are now wrinkled scabs half falling off but Fernando still kisses them better, presses his lips against every cut, scab, and scar like a prayer.  
  
Heikki looks down at him, and in a sudden urgent rush, it's out of his mouth before he can stop himself.  
  
"I don't know why it's taken me so long to say this but."  
  
Five seconds of painful silence and Fernando's stare could bore holes into the back of Godzilla's skull, Heikki thinks. He takes a deep breath.  
  
"But I love you, I think."  
  
  
  
6.  
"Do you know what will happen if the people find out?"  
  
Heikki shakes his head no. No, he doesn't know, no, he doesn't  _want_  to know, and he doesn’t have to know, because nobody would ever find out.   
  
"Nobody can know." Fernando sits down heavily next to him. Sighs and presses the insides of his wrists against dry eyes, then looks up at Heikki. There’s resignation and even a little hint of fear written into the tired lines of his face.  
  
"Heikki," he pleads, reaching out to touch his fragile face. "We have to be careful."  
  
"I know."  
  
"Or we stop."  
  
Heikki lurches forward and kisses him roughly because he doesn't want to hear anymore.  
  
  
  
7.  
They spend a week together in the off-season. They don't tell anyone. Heikki leaves the Helsinki-Malmi airport at five in the morning and lands in Barcelona International Airport four hours later. Fernando isn't waiting for him at the terminal (too risky, he says); so Heikki takes a cab to El Raval and Fernando meets him halfway.  
  
Later, at home, with all the endless sprawling promises that seven days can hold, they lie together, legs intertwined, arms everywhere, skin pressed against skin. Heikki trails light kisses along the dip and curve of Fernando's neck, runs his tongue up the entire length of Fernando's stomach, which makes him shudder delectably under his palms. Fernando's breath escapes him in tiny gasps, and Heikki draws him close, palms splaying across the tense, quivering expanse of his back, whispers  _patience, patience_.   
  
It's the only thing Fernando can make out in his delirious haze, but it is the best thing he has heard in a long time.  
  
  
  
8.   
Fernando hears about Heikki's accident over the pit radio. For a second, he is convinced that his heart has stopped beating, that an iron weight has sunk right to the bottom of his stomach, and he is overcome by a merciless urge to be sick.  
  
He catches a glimpse the helicopter circling ominously overhead, like a vulture surveying the spoils of battle. He imagines the paramedics, the stretcher, the wreckage, the blood, and Heikki.  
  
(Heikki with his bony elbows and bright eyes and pale skin and easy smile, the one he'd kissed in a hotel room in Italy, the one they called sunshine.)  
  
Something catches in Fernando's throat, his eyes begin to burn. And at three hundred kilometres per hour, in front of thousands of fans in his home race, Fernando wants nothing more than to get the hell out of his car and run all the fucking way to turn nine, where the wrecked remains of Heikki's car lay, trapped piteously under the tyre wall.  
  
The whole world could find out, for all he cared; he'd crash his own car into a tyre wall as well, if he had to.

 


End file.
